Recentring Intimacy in Hopping (Im)mobilities of Academic Precarity

ABSTRACT This article introduces the notion of ‘hopping (im)mobilities’, referring to relatively short‐term relocations—socially and geographically—within neoliberal academia. The data is drawn from two research projects focused on mobile researchers making Latvia and Japan their more permanent place. Our fieldwork reveals that researchers’ affective ties play a central role in place‐making. Whilst career progression and achievements matter for welfare and subjective wellbeing, we argue that recentring intimacy—connections to people and places—serves as a valuable analytical device that sheds light on the constitutive role of relationships in producing spaces, including academic knowledge spaces, and invites to pose much broader questions about the entrenched epistemologies of Western knowledge hubs, perceived undesirable peripheries and place from the standpoints of researchers themselves.